Partitioning a harddrive

[byrnesc1]

Wasn't really sure whether I should put this in the hardware or software part but I figure my question was more related to software so why not here. What software do you recommend for partitioning a hard drive and what are any tips or advice you could give me. I'm trying to partition my new 1tb external so that it's 500gb NTFS/500gb FAT32. I need the one partition in FAT32 so I can hook the hdd up to my ps3, so any added tips regarding that would be greatly appreciated as well. Thanks in advance and feel free to move this if you think it's more appropriate in the hardware forum.

[anon]

http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbw.cgi?Gw=partition+manager&n=2

Just pick one. Heard good things about GParted.

[byrnesc1]

heres a dumb q but what the hell. Will partitioning my hdd reformat both partitions? That is, will I be able to leave anything on it or do I have to move everything to my internal first and then format it completely?

[anon]

Will partitioning my hdd reformat both partitions?

Nope. That's how it used to be on the DOS and fdisk days, but nowadays most programs allow you to do nondestructive partitioning, which means your data won't be lost in the process. If you have less than 500GB of files and all you want to do is reducing the size of the first partition to create a second one, everything will be fine. :)

[byrnesc1]

Will partitioning my hdd reformat both partitions?

Nope. That's how it used to be on the DOS and fdisk days, but nowadays most programs allow you to do nondestructive partitioning, which means your data won't be lost in the process. If you have less than 500GB of files and all you want to do is reducing the size of the first partition to create a second one, everything will be fine. :)

Good to know, I was wondering what I was going to do with 100gb of compressed files that wont fit on my internal hd

[tesco]

Make a backup of the most important stuff just in case.

[anon]

Make a backup of the most important stuff just in case.

I have to say I agree. In the vast majority of cases, things should go fine, but you never know...

I haven't backed my stuff up in ages, so I'd be really fucked if something happened to any of my drives. Specially the terabyte one. :ermm:

[Expeto]

Murphy's law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_law) applies to the all of the partitioning operations, specially to the non-destructive ones

[zot]

It's important to keep in mind that there is a new hard drive "format" on most drives manufactured in the last few months, one that is essentially incompatible with the old drives and software.

A lot depends on the actual hard drive you have; if it is the new "advanced format" [4 KiloByte sector] drive (that manufacturers have been introducing in just the last few months) or if your HDD uses the old [512 byte sector] format that has been the standard for the last 30 years. (Sectors should not be confused with clusters, which are something completely different, although clusters are also sized in 512byte and 4KByte)

The problem is that partitioning a new 4KB-sector drive using tools designed for the old 512byte-sector drive can result in an un-aligned condition, which won't prevent it from working, but can slow down a hard drive by 50% or more.

This is why drive manufacturers like Western Digital offer a free Alignment Tool, to be run after a drive is partitioned. Some of the current versions of partitioning software --such as Paragon Hard Disk Manager 2011-- will internally support 4KB sectors, but most do not (yet) - meaning your HDD will need to be aligned after partitioning/imaging if using these non-compliant partitioning/imaging tools.

If you have a Seagate drive, these have built-in firmware that transparently auto-aligns the sectors, however most other brands, such as Western Digital, do not, and have to be manually aligned after partitioning.

It's often hard to know which format a drive has, as they don't say and even diagnostic software will often report the wrong sector size because an advanced-format drive's 4KB physical sectors are sub-divided into 512 byte logical sectors to make them backward-compatible with older operating systems like XP.

The Western Digital drives that have "EARS" in the model number use 4KB sectors, while WD drives that have "EADS" use 512byte sectors.

I learned all this for the first time just a few weeks ago when putting together a new PC. (I've been working with hard drives for many years, and I thought I knew all there was to know)

[peat moss]

Well put Expeto , especially when working on friends computers .